I was slammed for creating D&D plots that were enjoyable!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

FrantzJ: I’ve been playing since 1975 in 6th grade. I started with the ancient 3 small books. I have Ref’d most of the time. Some of my campaigns were huge epics, with breathtaking detail and some were Monty Hall Affairs that played to the Players. A good DM should make the game fun, be fairly consistent to the rules he has established but those rules are up to the DM and the players. I only play rarely the last 9 years or so. (Since my first child was born), but I have run the current campaign for 5 years and the players want to keep going. I told them I was going to bring it to a conclusion this winter and we would start something new.
I am still using AD&D first edition and my own hand crafted world and my own rules. They have really enjoyed it, but they are now too powerful for me to get any satisfaction out of the game.

So keep DM’ing if the players have fun, you are doing a good job. If you ever get a campaign that appears book worthy, you have done a great job. I love the fact that people who use to play still talk about the old campaigns. It makes me feel good that I succeeded. Rulebooks are a guide, not a straight jacket!

Jim

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There are always people who are playing a dice game, or a board game, or in fact trying to win a game. Then there are people who can enjoy a game where their fantasy character decides to ignore the fact that he rolled an 18 for strength, and play a magician. Why? because “He always wanted to be a magician.”

I played in the “Freeport Campaign” for about seven years or so, a very long time ago. From the first, I knew it would be a different sort of game. My first character had “Animal Trainer” as an original skill. I saw no animals. I asked each time we entered a new area, what sort of animals were around. No animals. After a whole week of game time I had not seen a single animal, and the bulk or our adventure was out of doors. I finally found a duck. “I grab the duck!” I said. I had failed to ask if the duck was large, small or in any way odd. Turns out the duck was wearing a gi. He killed me. He killed me in an offhand manner. Seven years later,
my character, Triskadecamus set into motion the events that killed the entire race of the Drow, and then slew Death himself.

Making up an entire mythos, becoming heroes, and then acting like heroes is fun. Rolling dice, and counting up squares of a game board is boring.

And years later, no one remembers the ability scores, or the ‘to hit’ score rolled when Bloodstone said, "I punt the Brownie, and yell “‘Pull!’” No one recalls why the character named “The Heart of Darkness” was able to fill the world with his darkness, or even exactly who the character was who used the party’s Wish scroll, so that “I wish we could sacrifice our souls, to light a light that would shine forever, even in The Heart of Darkness.”

Fantasy gaming is about fantastic things, not inches of map space, or random die rolls. The referee who said it best, when a board gamer showed him the “Monster Manual” said, “Yes, I am familiar with that book of suggestions. Nonetheless, Aprian, the King of Dragons, holds you motionless in his gaze, by sheer force of personality. Anyone want to risk his life to save this asshole?”

Triskadecamus
(who was once upon a time, the thirteenth lineal descendant of the Prime Magician, who invented magic.)

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You used the Kim Chee- Potion Of Unspeakable Foulness, didn’t you?

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You besmirch my honor, poltroon. I used plain old ordinary magic, and imagination. The kimche was just an horsdou. . . snack.

Tris

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Logical RP games are so boring. A good DM need s sence of humor and a creative mind. And then it’s the players duty to really screw with them. I remeber the discussions about whether a thrown halfling counts as a projectile, blunt, or siege attack(I once killed a demon by critically hitting him in the groin with an accidentally tossed halfling name peehead). Whether an attacking swarm of trained herring should have an attack from behind. (it did) etc.

46

I remember the game shop at the mall where we used to play because it was the easiest place for everyone to get to, and we didn’t have a consistent campaign because not every player could make it to every game. there was a core group of about 5, and our best adventures were just screwball encounters we had into while travelling (ie wierd crap we made up as we went along.) we took turns DM’ing again because the same people weren’t always there, and also to get different viewpoints.

one of them that I DM’ed was “The Kingdom of Haggis” which was technically about rescuing one of the other (absent player’s) PCs from the demented prince of a distant kingdom, but really about undoing a curse on the kingdom that made all food instantly turn into haggis. I’m sure that would make your by-the-rules friend break out in hives, but we laughed our arses off for almost 5 hours that night.

memorable moments: gems like one girl’s prissy elf warrior say, in a bad French accent, “all ma Brie 'as turn eento ze 'aggis!” or another guy daring to eat the haggis (I had him roll a constitution check, which came up 1. not only did he survive, but haggis became his very favorite food from then on!)

on the other hand, there was the new DM who put a sign up sheet in the shop and most of us signed up for it. a couple days later we got a phone call saying, meet me there at 6 and bring a first-level character. we showed up with our characters to find out that the campaign was seeking a major ring of elemental control (!) after fighting through a bunch of gorgons (with our 1st level characters, you do the math) and at one point he firestormed us because we were for some reason getting restless and non-cooperative, then graciously had our gods resurrect us to give us another chance to behave.

memorable moments…um… does the point where my group made half-baked excuses about having to get home then going for pizza count?

oh yes, there was also a sphinx asking a riddle in that “campaign,” and I did what any sensible panicked half-elf who didn’t know the answer would: bluff like crazy. all you Pratchett geeks think of Teppic and the sphinx from Pyramids.

FrantzJ, I think I would have enjoyed playing in your game quite a bit, and what wizards and bodaks do in the privacy of their own towers is no one’s business but their own :wink:

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(cough) is it too late to add an ING :smack:

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The OP’s DM buddy is full of haggis.

The DM is perfectly entitled to make up his (or her) own rules. He is effectively a supreme being. If the DM decides that the sky is green today and the ocean is comprised of chocolate syrup, so be it. If he thinks the dwarves should be 12 feet tall and the elves have no ears at all, so be it. The most important question is this: does the DM create a campaign that users want to play?

The gamer group I used to belong to had two members that were always playing rules lawyer. They spent their time between sessions coming up with outlandish uses for spells, weapons, magical items, whatnot, that were technically legal, but often violated the spirit of the game. Then, during game time, they would put these schemes into use, and argue with the DM for an hour if he tried to say no. As a result, their characters were low-level but insanely powerful (in gamer terminology, munchkins from hell), and would wipe out a whole army of foes before any of the other players had a chance to make a single attack roll. Those of us in the group who got sick of all this formed our own splinter cell and finally ditched the old group entirely.